John Smith Flett, 1869-1947

1948 ◽  
Vol 5 (16) ◽  
pp. 688-696
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Geological Museum ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time

John Smith Flett, who died on 26 January 1947, at the age of seventy-seven, has left an abiding mark on British geology, both as a scientific investigator and as an official administrator. His scientific contributions dealt mainly with petrography and many of them were necessarily of a routine and official character. His greatest services to his science were undoubtedly those given during his fifteen years as Director of His Majesty’s Geological Survey. In the unsettled and transitional period between the wars, it was indeed fortunate for the Survey and for geology that a man of Flett’s stamp—in intellect keen and acute, in character resolute and virile—should be at the helm. Under his guidance there arose the magnificent Geological Museum at South Kensington —a monument to a vision persistently followed. When we contemplate the outstanding part that the geologists of this small island have played in the foundation and evolution of their science, we must rejoice that at last an exhibition worthy of that record can be made. Flett was born in Kirkwall, Orkney, and received his early education at the Burgh School of that town. He passed to George Watson’s College, Edinburgh, and thence to the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A., B.Sc. (with honours in Natural Science), in 1892 and M.B., C.M., in 1894. During his academic career he gained an extraordinary variety of prizes, medals and scholarships. This was no ephemeral brilliance or inclination, and he maintained an interest in subjects outside his professional orbit all his life; he was especially attracted to literature of a somewhat caustic or satiric cast. After graduation, Flett was for a short time in medical practice but, in 1895, he forsook that career and turned himself for good to geology.

John Terence Coppock 1921–2000

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Clout
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Agricultural Productivity ◽  
Computer Applications ◽  
World Food ◽  
Geographical Union ◽  
University College London ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Agricultural Geography

Terry Coppock FBA was a pioneer in three areas of scholarship – agricultural geography, land-use management and computer applications – whose academic career was at University College London and the University of Edinburgh, where he was the first holder of the Ogilvie Chair in Geography. He received the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographic Society and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976. Coppock, who was Secretary and then Chair of the Commission on World Food Problems and Agricultural Productivity of the International Geographical Union, served as Secretary Treasurer of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. Obituary by Hugh Clout FBA.

scholarly journals XLVIII.—On the Physiological Action of the Calabar Bean (Physostigma venenosum, Balf.)

1867 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
General Medical Practice ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Therapeutic Uses ◽  
Rate Of Absorption ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Great Energy ◽  
Rapid Contraction

In 1855, the Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh, in a paper read before this Society, directed the attention of physiologists to some of the remarkable properties of the Calabar bean. In 1862, I presented a graduation thesis to the University of Edinburgh on the “Characters, Actions and Therapeutic Uses of the Ordeal Bean of Calabar.” The principal results I had obtained at that time were that this substance causes death by either syncope or asphyxia, the latter being due to an effect on the spinal cord and on the respiratory centres; that the symptoms resemble those of cardiac or pulmonary embarrassment, according to the quantity of the poison administered, and to its rate of absorption; and, also, that the topical application of this agent to the eyeball, or to its neighbourhood, produces a marked and rapid contraction of the pupil and various disturbances of vision. Since then, and more especially because of the peculiarity of the last of these conclusions, a lively interest has been taken in this substance. Its actions on the eye have been investigated by nearly all the leading ophthalmologists of Europe and of America, and its general physiology has occupied the attention of many distinguished students of biology. Nor have these labours been barren of practical results. Ophthalmic medicine has adopted this agent as one of its important remedies, and there can be little doubt that general medical practice will soon include in its Pharmacopœia a drug of so great energy.

scholarly journals John Graham Kerr, 1869-1957

1958 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Three Sisters ◽  
Broad Interest ◽  
Special Time ◽  
Selection Of

John Graham Kerr was born on 18 September 1869, at Arkley, Herts, the son of James Kerr, M.A., a former Principal of Hoogly and Hindu College, Calcutta, and of Sybella Graham, of Hollows, Dumfriesshire. He was third in a family of four with three sisters. His father was a well-known educationalist and the author of various works dealing with a number of topics including Indian educational problems, English orthography and aspects of human nature, and Thomas Carlyle. Graham Kerr, as he was known throughout the greater part of his life, lost his mother in early childhood and grew up under the influence of his father who although his tastes were mainly literary had a broad interest in general science, especially in natural history and evolution, in which he was widely read. His father superintended the early stages of his education, including latin and mathematics, and encouraged the reading of such books as Darwin’s The voyage of the Beagle , Waterton’s Wanderings , Wallace’s Amazon and Malay Archipelago , etc. In addition, his library contained a large selection of classical works, especially poetry and history, and Graham Kerr was brought up in a general atmosphere of literary culture. His schooling began at the parish school of Dalkeith, Midlothian, under William Young, a good example of the old-fashioned type of parish schoolmaster who did not hesitate to give special time and attention to any boy who in his opinion possessed the natural capacity to benefit by his teaching. After a short time at the Collegiate School, Edinburgh, he passed on to the Royal High School, where he was specially influenced by Munn, the mathematics master under whose tuition he became Dux of the Fifth Form. He subsequently enrolled in the University of Edinburgh and first concentrated on higher mathematics and natural philosophy. He then studied geology, botany and zoology and finally decided to follow out the curriculum in medicine. This was interrupted when on a wintry afternoon in February 1889, this young medical student of nineteen, returning home from his classes picked up a copy of Nature at the book-stall in Waverley Station, and read an announcement which in his own words ‘determined the whole future of my life’.

I.—Eminent Living Geologists

1890 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archibald Geikie
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Director General ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

Doctor Archibald Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835. He was educated at the Royal High School—the most famous of the many celebrated scholastic institutions of the “Modern Athens,” and at Edinburgh University. He became an Assistant on the Geological Survey of Scotland in 1855, and in 1867, when that branch of the Survey was made a separate establishment, he was appointed Director. A few years later—in 1871—he was elected to fill the Murchison Professorship of Geology and Mineralogy in the University of Edinburgh, when the chair for these subjects was founded by Sir Roderick Murchison and the Crown in that year. Subsequently he resigned these appointments, when at the beginning of 1881 he was appointed to succeed Sir Andrew C. Ramsay, as Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, and Director of the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street.

V. Part of a letter from Mr. Macky, Professor of History, to Mr. MacLaurin, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, and by him communicated to the President of the Royal Society; being an extract from the books of the Town-Council of Edinburgh, relating to a disease there, supposed to be venereal, in the Year 1497

1743 ◽  
Vol 42 (469) ◽  
pp. 420-421
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Town Council ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Town

If the Veneral Disease was never known in Europe till the Siege of Naples 1495, it must have made a very quick Progress through Europe in a short time; for in 1497, I find it raging in Edinburgh , and our King and his Council terribly alarmed at this contagious Distemper, as appears from a Proclamation of King James the IVth, in the Records of the Town-Council of Edinburgh .

scholarly journals Finlay Lorimer Kitchin, 1870-1934

1934 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-352
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
University Of Munich ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time

Finlay Lorimer Kitchin, the son of William Henry Kitchin, was born at Whitehaven on December 13, 1870. He was educated at St. Bees School and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he spent four years (1890-1894), the last year being devoted entirely to the study of Geology and Palaeontology. Soon after leaving Cambridge he proceeded to the University of Munich, where he commenced research in palaeontology under the direction of Zittel, and graduated Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1897. In after years Kitchin valued equally the broad outlook which he gained in Cambridge and the more specialized training which he received in Munich. After working for a short time unofficially in the British Museum (Natural History) he was appointed Assistant Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey in 1898, and in 1905 he succeeded the late E. T. Newton as Palaeontologist—a post previously held by Edward Forbes, T. H. Huxley, J. W. Salter, and R. Etheridge.

James Peddie Steele

1920 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
John Edwin Sandys
Keyword(s):  
Grammar School ◽  
English Poem ◽  
British School ◽  
Younger Men ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Second Year ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Assistant Lecturer

By the death of Dr. Steele of Florence on the sixteenth day of July 1917, in the eighty-second year of his age, the British School of Archaeology in Rome has lost one of its earliest and most generous benefactors. It is therefore fitting that a grateful tribute to his memory should find a place among the Papers of the School.James Peddie Steele was born at Dalkeith on 4 May, 1836. He was the son of the Rev. Peter Steele, for some time Rector of Dalkeith Grammar School. As a boy of fourteen he won a prize for an English poem on the Laocoon. At the University of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1859, his earliest distinctions were won in the field of the Greek and Latin Classics, in which he found a never failing source of inspiration and recreation during a large part of his long life. He attended the lectures of John Stuart Blackie, who, on his election to the Chair of Greek in 1853, was permitted to appoint an assistant lecturer to relieve him in some of the duties of his professorship. About 1860 the appointment was held for a short time by Steele, who was also associated with the ‘Hellenic Society’ founded among the younger men by Blackie, who ‘held weekly meetings in the evening for reading through the Greek classics…for pure delight, and not for minute critical exercise.’ I am informed that Professor J. A. Stewart, of Oxford, who knew Dr. Steele, had as a boy heard William Veitch, one of the most accurate Greek scholars of Scotland, express a high opinion of his scholarship. Most of his energies were, however, devoted to preparation for his future profession, and, with this aim in view, he became an M.D. and an L.R.C.S. of Edinburgh in 1861.

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